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ONE MAN'S OPINIONS
BY N. D. COCHRAN.
"Best" Telephone Service. Now
watch the trust press rush to the res
cue of the Bell phone trust and the
Marshall Field estate and other in
terests that own telephone stock
and advertise.
The Post was in a big enough hur
ry to beat the others to it It starts
off by admitting that the tunnel or
dinance "was passed through the
council in the odor of scandal," but
insists that it is neither wise nor just
"that the city should now attempt
to confiscate the Automatic Tele
phone Company," because "the mil
lions of money poured out by the
men who have tried to develop this
property had nothing to do with the
first ordinance."
Then the Post goes on to oppose
municipal ownership of the Auto
matic, and concludes as follows:
"What is wanted now is a way out
of this automatic franchise dispute
that will give the people of Chicago
the best telephone service. The at
tempted collection of a "pound of
flesh' from the automatic company is
not the way to reach that result."
All of which is bunk. Likewise
tommyrot Bell service won't be im
proved by grabbing the Automatic.
The service is rotten now, and every
subscriber knows it. The Automatic
has been managed in sympathy with
the Bell and hasn't been competition
in any sense. If it were out of the
way, Bell service would be the same
kind of service the people always get
from a public service monopoly pri
vately owned.
If what is wanted is the best tele
phone service, what is to prevent the
Bell from giving it now?
Nothing but greed for more profit.
It has laid off operators-lately and
given worse service than before, and
not a newspaper except The Day
Book has registered a kick.
The business game under private'
ownership of public utilities is to get
the largest possible revenue with the
least possible expense. Profit is the
main consideration. Under public
ownership, service should be the
main consideration and at the least
possible cost to the public.
There is no occasion for mawkish
sympathy for the millionaires back
of the tunnel company. They got the
franchise in the first place by trick
ery and then they tried to trick the
people into letting them sell the Auto
matic to the phone trust by sneaking
the thing through council while the
newspapers shut their eyes and kept
quiet and every newspaper knew
that if council consented to the pur
chase of the automatic by the Bell,
the price paid could be added to Bell
capitalization and phone users would
be forced to pay it in increased phone
rates.
The tunnel company came into
existence as a phone company un
der the pretense of giving the people
better and cheaper phone service.
But the phone franchise was a fake.
What thejromoters really wanted
and got was a franchise to build a
freight subway. When they got that,
they wanted to throw over the phone
plant or sell it for what they could
get from the trust
Nothing has transpired in years
that more plainly proved to the peo
ple of Chicago the need of an adless
newspaper like The Day Book, that
couldn't be subsidized by public serv
ice corporations, department stores
and other large advertisers.
Had it not been for The Day Book
the public would have known nothing
at all about the scheme for the Bell
to grab the Automatic and make
phone users pay for it; and hence
there would have been no public sen
timent back of council in its present
purpose to protect the public interest
Thousands of people know this
now; and it won't be so easy in the
future for selfish interests to grab
valuable special privileges, by sudsi-